Edward FitzGerald

Bright arrogance #14

How the weird enters the world, part one

Joe Milutis

Image from Edmund Joseph Sullivan's illustrations of Rubáiyát from 1913, appropriated in 1966 by the Grateful Dead

There is a large shelf in the poetry section of Powell’s Used Book Warehouse in Portland, Oregon that is weighed down exclusively by versions of Edward FitzGerald’s illustrious and legendarily loose translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. It is perhaps the destiny of only the greatest poems to become furniture, decorative shelf-filler, markers of conformity masquerading as taste. Ultimately, unread. Just as easily do these all-too-willingly adopted artifacts start to become emblems of an embarrassing past, haunting “used” stores with their overabundance like copies of Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights.

Recently in Jacket2

Poets of the nineties: poetry against poetry

Huda Fakhreddine

From left to right: ʿImad Abu Salih, Iman Mirsal and Usama al-Danasuri — From left to right: ʿImad Abu Salih, Iman Mirsal, and Usama al-Danasuri

“Poets of the Nineties” is a phrase used to refer to a generation of Egyptian poets who came to prominence in the mid-1990s. A group of them called themselves al-Jarad (Locust). The nexus of the group was an underground magazine by the same name, founded in 1994 by a few members, most active among them are Ahmad Taha (b. 1950) and Muhammad Mitwalli (b. 1970). These writers intentionally disengaged from the motivations of their modernist predecessors.

Slowing the rate of perception (PoemTalk #134)

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, 'Hello, the Roses'

PoemTalk

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Al Filreis was joined for this episode of PoemTalk by Evelyn Reilly, Joshua Schuster, and James Sherry to discuss the title poem of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s book Hello, the Roses (New Directions, 2013; 58–62). Berssenbrugge’s PennSound page includes two recordings of her performance of this poem. The recording we played before our discussion is from a reading given at Dominique Levy Gallery in New York in March of 2016.

March 19, 2019

Fifty poets on fifty poems

A book to be published in 2020

Al Filreis

Anna Strong Safford and I are editing a book, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2020, in which we present fifty poets writing 1,000 words each in response to fifty poems. Fred Wah on Creeley’s “I Know a Man.” Rachel Blau DuPlessis on H.D's “Sea Rose.” Tyrone Williams on Baraka’s “Incident.” And also Mónica de la Torre on Erica Baum’s “Déjà vu.” Reproduced above is Baum’s piece (from “Card Catalogues”).